land Article Landscape Assessment and Economic Accounting in Wind Farm Programming: Two Cases in Sicily Salvatore Giuffrida, Filippo Gagliano, Francesco Nocera * and Maria Rosa Trovato Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, University of Catania (ITALY), 95125 Catania, Italy; [email protected] (S.G.); [email protected] (F.G.); [email protected] (M.R.T.) * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +39-095-738-2366 Received: 18 August 2018; Accepted: 11 October 2018; Published: 15 October 2018 Abstract: In recent years, the scientific interest for the economic and landscape impact of wind farms has increased. This paper presents a useful GIS tool that allows for helping policymakers and investors to identify promising areas for wind power generation as well as landscape impact and financial and economic sustainability of wind farms. The results of the research carried out for exploring the potential for wind energy in two territorial contexts of Sicily region are presented with the particular look at the possibilities of economic developing, stakeholders’ opportunities and obstacles in the policy, legal, and regulatory framework. Keywords: wind energy; landscape impact; GIS tools; economic-financial valuation; DRSA decision making pattern 1. Introduction The Climate and Energy package passed by the European Union (EU) to meet the goals of the Kyoto Protocol with the intention of preventing climate instability, known as the 20 20 20 Plan (Directive 2009/29/EC) [1], provides for joint action on CO2 emission levels (−20%), energy production from renewable sources (+20%) and primary energy saving (−20%) by the end of 2020, with a commitment to reduce emissions by 50% to the end of 2050. The outline of these courses of action also specifically considers local and business policies—carbon footprint measurements of products, RET (Renewable Energy Target) incentives, CO2 compensation through urban forestation, as well as environmental, energy, and climate education and training. These embrace aspects that are deeper than those generically indicated by the environmental and economic policy tools that rely on “command and control logic” and that refer to the compensatory/commercial approach of the Coasian matrix. The regional energy policy in Sicily is governed by the Environmental Energy Plan of the Sicily Region (Piano Energetico Ambientale della Regione Siciliana—PEARS)[2], which identifies wind energy as the best opportunity for Sicily to produce clean energy and reduce pollutant emissions. As a result, planning its use must be optimised, given the high production potential offered by the conformation of the Sicilian territory and its anemometric characteristics. Since these are joint economic, territorial, and landscape issues, there are two main issues that planners and Decision Makers in this sector must address: on one hand, the amount of installed power that Sicily can/must provide, and, on the other, the location/size of the plants. These topics involve wide ecological and environmental issues that are profoundly affected by the scientific assessment methods and content, precisely because it is impossible to provide evidence for or against this kind of energy production, especially when comparing the overall supply chain with that of fossil fuels. Consequently, opinion on wind energy varies significantly. This opinion is positive if we take a deep long-term ecological view and worry about the progressive shift of environmental and human cost towards the most disadvantaged areas of the planet. It views territorial containment, Land 2018, 7, 120; doi:10.3390/land7040120 www.mdpi.com/journal/land Land 2018, 7, 120 2 of 20 by companies and homes, and the outcomes of their needs and relative economic performance on the environment and landscape, so that they are “aware” of the effects their lifestyles have [3,4]. More restrictive and fundamentally pessimistic views about the possibility of substantially withdrawing fossil fuels, sees the development of wind farms as yet another excuse for needless infrastructure, plundering the territory and violating the “landscape structure” [5,6]. This leads to an imbalance between local decisions/negotiation and “broadcasting” with large scale impact, which is done blindly when compared to strategic planning. The financial compensation is insignificant in comparison to the value of the landscape and those who regret its loss after the fact. Financial incentives and compensation introduce new, sometimes distortional [3], extraneous, and abstract rules about how we relate to the landscape, with the total, personal and collective experience that identifies individuals and communities. These rules are intended to be long-term and linked to the thin thread of delicate balance. Finally, the susceptibility of the political/administrative system to specific interests and corruption completes this critical picture [7,8]. The proposed contribution aims to address assessment and planning at a provincial scale, with reference to two different territorial contexts, integrating the set of tools needed to define the plant location models into a descriptive, semantic and syntactic model. The specific objects are: - the descriptive model provides the factual elements useful for wind farm positioning; - the semantic model associates each wind farm with attributes of economic value and landscape; and, - the syntactic model defines the decision rules for the formation of the best territorial allocation layout of wind farms in the two provinces examined. 2. Materials The territories of the two provinces, Enna and Siracusa present wide differences as regards their location in the geographical context, the orography, the degree of anthropization, and the quality of the natural and cultural landscape. The province of Enna occupies the central part of the island for an area of 2574.7 km2 and it includes 20 municipalities, with a total population of 168,737 inhabitants [9]. The province of Siracusa occupies the southeastern part of the island for an area of 2109 km2 and includes 21 municipalities, with a total population of 400,881 inhabitants [9]. The result is a considerable difference in population density, 65.5 inhab./km2 Enna versus 190.1 inhab./km2 Siracusa and consequently a different degree of urbanization and infrastructure of the territory. For these purposes, the structured and rich coastal area in the territory of Siracusa, which attracts investments and tourism, with remarkable impacts on the real estate market prices expectations [10,11], differs significantly from the territory of Enna, which is rather introverted and much less rich also from the point of view of wealth capitalized in real estate [12]; its economy, originally focused mainly on the primary (agricultural, mining etc.) sector, is now growing also in the cultural heritage ones and numerous projects aimed at the territorial restructuring are now in progress [13]. From the orographic point of view the two provinces present significant differences (Figure1): - the province of Siracusa is characterized by an extended and jagged waterfront, 447.6 km equal to 89% of the total perimeter of its territory (503.4 km), and a wide flat belt formed in the north by a portion of the alluvial plain of Catania and the Etna lava lands that give life to vast cultivations citrus; to the east a narrower flat belt, densely urbanized, and industrialized; the southern part the coastal landscape is shaped by the action of the sea waters, with the formation of wide marshes, and of the rivers that flow on the wide karst plateau; the central part of the province extends over the Ibleo plateau, a mountain range that was formed by a massive calcareous-marly white conch of the Miocene (Plateau of the Hyblaean); the Ibleo plank has a mainly hilly layout increasing in altitude towards the hinterland to the west, where it is dominated by high reliefs: Lauro Mount Land 2018, 7, 120 3 of 20 (986 m a.s.l), Contessa Mount (914 m a.s.l), Casale Mount (910 m a.s.l), Santa Venera Mount (869 m a.s.l) and Erbesso Mount (821 m a.s.l); some relevant Iblean reliefs are Pancali Mount (485 m a.s.l.) and the Climiti Mounts (416 m a.s.l.) that face the Gulf of Augusta; the Ibleo plateau slopes towards the sea maintaining an average altitude of about 300 m a.s.l.; and, - the province of Enna covers the central part of the island, is the only one in Sicily that has no access to the sea, and is 18 km from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the north, 28 km from the Channel of Sicily to the south, 26 km from the Ionian Sea to East; within its mountainous territory important geographical signs converge, the ridges of the three main mountain ranges of the island, the Nebrodi, the Madonie and the Erei, which were the geographical limits of the three administrative districts during the Islamic and later Norman periods (828–1072), Val Demone, Val di Noto and Val di Mazzara; consequently, on the one hand, the ridges of these three mountain chains are the most suitable locations for the wind farm, on the other, these locations generate the greatest landscape impact both for the extensive intervisibility of the plants and for the interference with the migratory routes of the birdlife; a further aspect that affects the suitability of the location of wind farms is the roughness of the territory that is characterized by the reliefs that dampen the wind speed at low altitude, making it necessary to install higher wind turbines; remarkable mountain reliefs in the province of Enna are: Sambughetti Mount (1558 m a.s.l.) Altesina Mount (1192 m a.s.l.), Rossomanno Mount (885 m a.s.l.), Torre Mount (643 m a.s.l.); the lowest point in the province of Enna is 61 m a.s.l. Figure 1. Geographical frame and orography of Enna and Siracusa provinces. 3. Methods The main purpose of this study is the formation of a decision model to support energy policy that is focused on renewable wind power [14,15].